Domestication
by Jenger
Summary: What keeps Fox McCloud from eating Peppy Hare? Wolf, Falco and Fox may act human, flying airplanes in their coordinate outfits and such, but they’re still predators…*I mentioned them since they are predators, they aren’t in this, but I'll get to to
1. New Import

original 10-9 mod 2-7-02 1-3-03 1-5-03  
  
Rated PG13 This story began from an excerpt from one of my Anthropology papers. Anthropology is a highly recommended class, you learn about people who aren't like you and in doing so, begin to understand your own. Everyone should take anthro.  
  
  
  
Chapter 1: 14mm reel on the Kipselip Nomads of the Holth Ice Plains, Fortuna  
  
  
  
They were slaughtering the animal within their home, splattering blood and  
  
various internal organs where children played and people slept; it was distressing, but my  
  
discomfort was only beginning. The true horror came when the vixen butchering the seal  
  
actually started to feed the children, passing out flecks of gore hand to tiny hand. She  
  
had un-gloved both of her clotted paws to better dip into the torn belly. The corpulent  
  
body quivered like jelly. The kill had not frozen yet. She carefully knelt to help a  
  
particularly young girl sip the raw blood out of her cupped and bloody hands. Pert lips  
  
came up red and shining in the lamplight before a tiny pink tongue darted out to catch the  
  
last drops. A little cub smiles sweetly, his sleek tail swaying, as he bites a length of  
  
entrail with bitty milk teeth. In a strange way, the faraway scene remindes me of the  
  
Nutcracker video I saw to learn about Christmas, the part where that wizened toy maker  
  
passes out all his offerings. I imaginee him among the children. A rag doll for you, a bit  
  
of chocolate for you and for you, My Dearest, a scoop of blood and viscera, hot from the  
  
carcass.  
  
I notice with a certain discomfort that classmates, who were previously absorbed in  
  
the captivating scene, have turned, eyeing me oddly in various degrees of bewilderment  
  
or offense. With a shock, I suddenly realize I let slip a giggle at the last thought. My  
  
slight hands, formerly engaged in quick note taking, freeze. Random explicatives pepper  
  
my thoughts. Miou.I tried so hard and I'm lost, wondering what best to do, until I catch  
  
the murmured words 'new' and 'off world'. I sigh in my mind. That's right, I am new  
  
and I don't know what's what. For all you folk know I eat real mice for breakfast and  
  
hundred other horrible things. I cough into my paw, embarrassed, and look away from  
  
the scene. Different again. 


	2. Old Blood

Chapter 2: Old Blood  
  
  
  
Another watches the scene a few desks away, fascinated with the kill. He eyes  
  
the struggle and eventual bloodshed unflinchingly behind thin gold rimmed frames, an  
  
indifferent and clinical gaze. Others are staring with slack jawed horror, pencils  
  
forgotten in weak grips, but his steady paw produces a stream of detached observations  
  
and annotations on a college ruled notebook. The Onyx pen flows lazily, smoothly  
  
without hitch or pause. Apathy incarnate, his indifference seems complete, but his  
  
refined feline features betray him subtly. As the events on the 14-mm research film  
  
climax, a delicate tension builds around his luminous green eyes and a shift in the jaw  
  
makes his profile somehow harder. The panther's craving shows dimly, like a flicker in  
  
the grass or a murky outline of a predator in shadow. He clasps the pen tightly in his  
  
black grasp, holding back the mounting urges. Deathly still, he hopes he still looks  
  
bored.  
  
  
  
Predation had been strictly outlawed long before he was born by the rule of the  
  
Domesticated, but Wilfen Lepon of House Lepon, that influential line stretching back  
  
on Fortuna centuries before the Taming movement, burned with resentment of these  
  
limits that kept him sheathed in apathy despite the stirring in his blood. He was in no  
  
way alone. The rest of his kindred resented these _unnatural_ restrictions, these inane  
  
restrictions that interfered with the _natural_ laws. The relationship between predator  
  
and prey stands forever sacred, an article immutable under any flimsy law or superficial  
  
rule. Wilfen's paternal grandfather Lars explained in his deep genial tones that unlike  
  
Nature, the rules of the mob -of the herd as he called it- were only temporal and easily  
  
sidestepped. Outside of the family's estate one simply had to 'strive for indifference.'  
  
  
  
The stately gray lion always had a tone of contempt on anything concerning the  
  
Domesticated Party, but the patriarch of the Lepon Clan was not a fool. Advisories, often  
  
half-hidden in his oblique insults, measured out of his burring voice, "those Domestic  
  
become so nervous about any Carnivora that seem too interested." Words strangely both  
  
dismissive and cautionary at the same time. Wil's frail elitist grandmother was just as  
  
proud, but in a keenly senile way he found utterly annoying. The constant nagging or  
  
bragging about tradition as Wil saw her out -leading Silent Hans her 'bodyguard,'  
  
actually more of a nursemaid, to wheel her down the hallways to the waiting car- could  
  
be met stoically with his well cultivated patience, but her lectures were unfailingly the  
  
worst.  
  
  
  
Plying her driveling lectures upon flocks of hapless grandchildren, torn between ensuring  
  
large sums of inheritance and bearing the brain aching drone, seemed to be one of the few  
  
pleasures left in her no-sugar filtered-air non-fat anti-bacterial pre- chewed out-of-direct-  
  
sunlight lifestyle. Will remembered the very last time he had to listen to her faltering  
  
invalid voice, it's decrepit croaking an appalling reminder of mortality to the huddle of  
  
hale youths visiting. He sat through, as he had many times before, "We Remember A  
  
History Before The Domestication", which dragged into "Our Memory Persists, Even If  
  
Others Have Forgotten", but finally even his patience wore out when at "We Have  
  
Traditions Of Our Own, No Matter What Law The Land Is Under." she broke into a fit  
  
of flemy wheezing. In desperation, he finished the speech, heard so many agonizing  
  
times, for her ".And Tradition Is Well Kept Within This Family." He almost added  
  
an enthusiastic "Damn Tradition" afterward, but though better of it when Grandmamar  
  
Lara, rendered pleasantly speechless from her ails and the surprise, finally recovered. In  
  
the same breath, she drizzled honey dipped language upon him for being 'such a clever  
  
child' possessing 'such a sharp memory' and 'such a fine orator" and then ordered him  
  
out of the room for being 'such a loudmouth'. When he finished relating the story to  
  
Grandpapar Lars afterwards, the lion was laughing loud enough to flatten Wil's ears  
  
back. Lars went on to explain that Grandmamar couldn't stand a smart-aleck because she  
  
had married one, which made him laugh all the harder. Wil smiled graciously despite the  
  
temporary damage to his ears. It was only temporary. Besides, he was certainly  
  
Grandpapar's favorite after that; Wil's share of the inheritance was assured. No more  
  
visits to Grandmamar. Hunts with Grandpapar began. 


End file.
